1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ecological board and its applications, and especially to an ecological board which is durable, stable, easy to construct and repair, and more environmentally friendly to the natural landscape.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
Owing to limited land and rapid population growth, it is a current trend to reclaim land from the ocean. The economy status and land condition of Taiwan even make it inevitable to develop its coastline. Hence, there are land reclamation projects along coastlines in Taiwan from north to south, such as Keelung New Port (1,300 hectare), Tanhai New Town and Wastewater Treatment Plant (1,700 hectare), Bali Sand and Gravel Harbor (850 hectare), Northern Guanyin Oil Harbor (1,400 hectare) and Industrial Park (1,700 hectare), Xiangshan Tidal Flat (1,025 hectare), Changhua Xinxing Landfill Site and Changhua Coastal Industrial Park (3,643 hectare), Yunlin Offshore Industrial Park (15,680 hectare), Yunlin and Chiayi Waisanding Sand Bar Industrial Park (3,031 hectare), Chiayi Aogu Industrial Park (1,000 hectare), Beimen Township (1,000 hectare) and Qigu Township (2,800 hectare) of Tainan, Tainan Technology Industrial Park (1,000 hectare), Singda Ocean-going Fish Harbor (460.2 hectare), Kaohsiung International Airport and Deep-water Port (6,500 hectare), and Ho-Ping Cement Industrial Park in Hualien (394 hectare). The above-mentioned cases are all ambitious large-scale development projects: some are up to 6 kilometers away from the seashore, some have sea dykes extending to 30 or 40 meters below water, some have coastlines as long as 13 to 25 kilometers, and some even cover a whole county's coastline and can arguably be rated as the biggest coastline development project in the world across the century.
The foregoing land reclamation projects usually begin with building artificial structures such as breakwaters, sea dykes, and jetties along the coastlines and then fill in a large amount of rocks and sand to turn the offshore areas into land. However, to coastal landform, land reclamation is an irreversible change. It results in even stronger reflections of the ocean waves, which speedily undermine and collapse the artificial structures such as breakwaters, sea dykes, and jetties. Reconstruction after damage takes another long period of time, severely threatening the safety and property of coastal residents. The most commonly used remedy is to place a large number of armor blocks in the sea area beside the breakwaters, sea dykes, and jetties to avoid direct impact of the ocean waves. However, as soil loss at the bottom layer causes the armor blocks to sink continually, more blocks need to be added. The vicious circle leads to the disappearance of natural coastlines and damages the scenery. The road-widening project of Hualien-Taitung Coastal Highway, one of the major construction projects of the “Six-Year National Development Plan”, is an example of the previously-mentioned problem. In order to widen the highway, the road width needs to be extended in the coastline direction and a new subgrade is required. A large amount of rocks and sand fills the coastline to form the new subgrade, and a lot of concrete armor blocks are placed on the beach to prevent the new subgrade from being undermined by the ocean waves. As a result, the most precious coastline in Taiwan, which extends to over 170 kilometers and is viewed as a “National Treasure”, becomes an armor block embankment and the natural scenery is seriously affected. Further, the total construction cost amounts to 10.7 billion NT Dollars. Hence, constant new addition of armor blocks and breakwaters to maintain the integrity of the coastline is not only costly, demanding, and time-consuming, but their future repair and maintenance expenses could also become an unfathomably great financial burden. Moreover, they severely damage the natural scenery and cause the natural coastline to disappear. The existing land reclamation method of building breakwaters and placing armor blocks has indeed caused significant burden and damage to our economy and environment.
Similar to the disappearance of natural coastlines in offshore areas, soil loss of mountain slopes, river slopes, and reservoir slopes also share the same problem. Hence, to protect our ecology and environment, it is vital that we figure out a method of providing proper protection and adopting universally applicable set-up units which are able to attach and combine with one another to form a large area.